Archive for the ‘ 365 Project ’ Category

14. Still Life

I went to some college fest yesterday to shoot. I saw this security person and found the lights quite interesting ( I was shooting in B&W ).

After some shots I noticed the peculiar expressions on his face. The expression of boredom, monotonous life. The cry for some excitement in life.

And that gave me the subject of today’s post.

Aim: To capture the emotions of boredom, dullness in a security guard daily routine

I started with finding the right vantage point to shoot.

I finalized two of them with a specific purpose for each.

1. Shot from front showing the expressions on the face.

2. Shot from behind showing the body language.

I started with the 1st idea of capturing emotions on his face.

After some time I started noticing very small details like:  the shadow of the guard on table, the red colored small M on his tie, the edges of the table. I tried to include the shadow and some changes to include table more dynamically.

The result was not that great so I took a break analyzing again the activity around him. I noticed that he was almost fixed to his spot while people were going in and out.

And then I thought of capturing what can be said as the literal translation of still life. The security guard frozen to his spot while showing the blurred motion of people in the background. But it was difficult managing shooting at low shutter speed without tripod and  the guard was also moving. So I talked to him and requested him to be still for some time.

Then I went to try the second idea of showing his body language by shooting from behind.

After analyzing all results I selected the photograph showing the movement of people. I did some changes in Lightroom and here is the final result

P.S. : please give your feedback as it will help me in improving my photography skills

13. On Top of the World

This post is about the other side of photography: Post-processing

I used Lightroom for the editing.

Original Image                                                                                                                                  Final Image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main points I observed which can make this image better were:

1. The background is slightly over-exposed.

2. The reds in the T-shirt of boy and the umbrella can be improved ( more saturated and luminant ).

3. The blue color of the T-shirt of girl can be more luminant.

4. The background color is washed out.

This is the histogram of original image. The over-exposed background is evident here.

1. White balance: Changed the white balance to slightly blue as it was giving a good contrast to the reds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. I decreased the exposure and used the recovery bar to recover details in the highlights. I increased the Blacks slightly to increase the contrast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. I changed the highlights and shadows tone to green to reduce the numbers of colors in the photograph. It also gave more impact to the couple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Gave the photograph a slight vignetting to give more emphasis to couple.

Final Histogram

 

Final Image

Image

12. Fear

Aim: to experiment with Photo-manipulation

I used http://www.tutzor.com/tutorials/scared-photomanipulation-tutorial-part-1 as my guide and decided to create exactly same. Previously I had tried to do photo-manipulation on my own but failed miserably. So I decided to use tutorials till I am able to make some of my own.

As given in the tutorial, it required 3 different photographs. One for eyes, one for mouth and one for general hand and body posture.

 

The main Photograph, fingers were elongated in photoshop to enhance the scary effect.

Photograph used for eyes

Photograph used for mouth

I am quite satisfied with the end result but I am looking forward to the day when I will create Photo-manipulations on my own.

 

 

11. HDR

Aim: To experiment with the technique of HDR (High Dynamic Range)

Idea: To capture sunset as the sky is very dynamic at that time.

Shot in the daylight after a long time. I noticed a few points about HDR shooting while preparing for the shoot.

1. As it is to capture a wide spectrum of tones, you must have that much amount of detail in the scene

2. Use tripod as a slight change in position can produce ghost type effects while creating HDR

3. You can use the Photoshop plugin- HDR Pro or the software designed for HDR only- Photomatrix Pro

This is the trial HDR. I found this boat quite interesting to use as a foreground. As the sun is high in the sky there is not much gradation of tones there. So, I decided to wait till sunset.

The above shot was looking quite static. I changed the camera position to give the boat a more dynamic feel. I fixed my tripod at this position.

This is the final HDR image I created. There are few things I like about it and others which can be improved. Such as:

1. I like the details of the texture in the boat.

2.  The sky, both colors and details could have been better.

3. The camera position could have been changed slightly to give a more 3D dynamic view of  boat.

PS: Please provide your comments and feedback

Couldn’t resist to re-edit the image. Worked on the sky, made the reds less luminant, removed the blue cast over mountains/hills and darken the greyish shades just above the hills.

How do you like the new version? What more you suggest to improve?

10. Angry Tears

Aim: To depict the anger in sadness

Idea: Use of photo-manipulation to show both anger and sadness

Initially I thought of showing four hands and four eyes, each set for one emotion. But then it appeared too hard to implement and I was a bit tired too. Then someone suggested of using an eye for each emotion and it appeared easy to implement. I din’t achieve the result I wanted but I will try to do better next time. This is my first attempt at Photo-manipulation and I hope to do better in future.

Please comment!

1. Angry face

2. Sad face (with tears)

Final image: Angry tears

 

8. Woman

More photographs with smoke, just trying to improve my skills

1. Something to hold on

 

2. Reflection

 

 

3. Elegance

7. Colors of Smoke

I read more about smoke photography and learnt that smoke can have colors. Graham Jeffrey has written and done a lot in colored smoke photography.

Today I am just posting some results of my experiments with colored smoke photography.

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6. Colors of Laughter

Typically in last 5 days, I had been creating photographs. This time I kept the subject fixed. The exercise was to analyse the subject and to photograph it in a way which present its attributes clearly.

Aim: To shoot ‘Laughing Buddha’

 Trial shot: Golden color would look better on black background and more exposure would be better

                          It looked better on black background but the photograph was very ordinary

                                So I gave him goggles 😛 . But still something more must been done.

I observed that Laughing Buddha was about life, laughter, prosperity. I decided to color his clothes to give colors to his laughter.

                                               The colors look good on white too but black was better.

                                                            This was an unusual angle and i like it.

Final image: I liked the angle, the shadow and the texture of the chart paper. Spent a lot of time editing in photoshop, in fact I can write a complete post on how i edited it :-p

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Some more results of experiments with smoke

5. Smoke Woman

Aim: to play with smoke

Inspired from http://www.digital-photography-school.com/smoking-allowed-investigating-smoke-art-photography

I got some hint of a woman from this shot

Edited by photoshop to make the shape more prominent

Final in black

Blue colored with black background

Blue with white background

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